COOPERATION. 567 



&quot; The Padiham and Pendleton Co-operative companies were started, 

 owned and governed by the men and women who actually worked in 

 the mill.&quot; 



But these, and kindred establishments, soon went the same 

 way as the rest. At Rochdale, however, better results were 

 achieved by a corn-mill, which, while it started with the 

 profit-sharing principle, contained many shareholders who 

 were not employes, and presently abandoned the &quot; bounty 

 to labour. &quot; Similarly a mill at Oldham, founded by co- 

 operators &quot; to enable working men to be their own masters,&quot; 

 and in which, at first, the &quot; workers were largely share 

 holders,&quot; though it prospered and has survived, has now 

 become a concern in which &quot; few if any of its employes 

 happen to be shareholders.&quot; Profit-sharing was eventually 

 discontinued; and it then turned out that &quot; the recipients of 

 bonus had been reduced in their wages,&quot; and, &quot; on its dis 

 continuance their wages were raised 20 per cent.&quot; Grad 

 ually these concerns have lapsed into qualified joint-stock 

 companies &quot; Working-class Limiteds,&quot; as they have been 

 called. From Miss Potter s digest and tables, it appears that 

 in 1891, when her book was published, there were, out of a 

 total of 59 groups of manufacturing cooperators, only eight, 

 most of them small and young (5f years on the average), 

 which carried out with some consistency the scheme of 

 labour-copartnership (to adopt the pleonastic term now used 

 for distinction). The rest fall short of it either as having 

 given up their self-government, or as consisting of small 

 working-class masters employing non-members as wage- 

 earners (and often treating them hardly), or as being asso 

 ciations in which the capital is held by outside shareholders, 

 while the employes have no part in the management. Thus 

 the designed structure has proved unstable. The salvation 

 has been proportionate to the backsliding. 



Quite different, however, is the belief of Mr. Holyoake, 

 and quite different his version of the facts. The August 

 number of Labour Copartnership contains the following 

 table:- 



